By Francis Ewherido
Overtime since my brother, Senator Akpor Pius Ewherido, died, I have read and seen vain attempts and insinuations by some people to pin the travails of Chief James Ibori, the former governor of Delta State, during the President Goodluck Jonathan government on my brother. I have always seen them as beer parlour gossips and ignored them. My dear brother is gone, why dissipate energy on an exercise that will not bring him back? But last Saturday, I saw a two-page article in Saturday Vanguard [Tinubu, Atiku, Okowa, Ribadu, Ibori: The controversies, the truth – Vanguard News (vanguardngr.com)]. It was written by Tony Eluemunor, one of Chief Ibori’s media men.
Initially when I saw the headline and the name of the writer, I felt it was a piece of public relations work to rebrand and reposition Chief Ibori. It is normal in mass communication practice. When I started reading and with the photos of Chief Ibori and Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, the immediate past governor, I saw a subtle reminder to PDP members in Delta State, who denied Chief James Ibori the opportunity to choose a PDP governorship candidate to succeed Okowa, that Ibori was back in the corridors of power. Eluemunor wanted them to know that Ibori is still very much relevant contrary to their thinking.
These had nothing to do with me, so I moved on to other news items until my attention was drawn to a portion of the article where my late brother’s name, Senator Ewherido, was mentioned and my family and my brother were portrayed in a very bad light. My first worry is that why is my brother’s name coming up in an article dealing with current PDP matters? My brother left the PDP in 2010 and died in 2013. That is about 13 and 10 years ago, respectively. What has he got to do with current happenings in Delta State PDP?
Going through that portion, it became apparent that Eluemunor was also on an evil mission against the dead and living Ewheridos. He claimed that my late brother was among those who “railroaded” Ibori to Jail. How? He said my brother and someone else wrote a petition against Ibori to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. That is nebulous. How do you make wild allegations without concrete facts? What information was in the purported petition? Do they tally with the grounds on which the London court convicted Ibori?
Eluemunor insinuated that the former EFCC Chairman, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, is lobbying Ibori to get the position of National Security adviser in President Bola Tinubu’s government. Perhaps the alleged Ribadu’s lobby is an opportunity for Eluemunor to find out from Ribadu if the evidence he supplied to the British authorities were from my brother’s so-called petition against Ibori? Is Eluemunor saying the so-called petition my brother and another person wrote was what the UK court relied on to convict Ibori? Is Eluemunor telling the world that the EFCC is so inept that it had to rely on my brother and that other person, Eluemunor did not mention, to get information to get Ibori convicted in London? Eluemunor paints the British legal system like the alleged external influence-prone Nigerian legal system. Can Pius Ewherido even influence the Nigerian legal system to send an almighty Chief James Ibori to jail, not to talk of the stricter British Legal system? Eluemunor writes as if he is telling children tales by the moonlight.
Was it on the so-called petition my brother gave to Obasanjo that got Ibori into trouble with former President Goodluck Jonathan? I know that government is a continuum, but Ibori’s problem with Jonathan had nothing to do with my brother. Both men are still alive and in a best position to tell the world what their issues were, personal or official.
Meanwhile Eluemunor had detailed what happened between Ibori and Obasanjo that got Ibori into Obasanjo’s bad book. It had nothing to do with Pius Ewherido, but Ibori’s initial support for former Vice President Abubakar Atiku, when he wanted to contest against Obasanjo in the PDP primaries that produced candidates for the 2003 Presidential election. Ibori later made up with Obasanjo, the details of which are not important here and much of it is public knowledge anyway.
After the late President Umaru Yar A’dua died, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who was the Vice President, automatically became the president. It was during Jonathan’s time that Ibori fled the country to Dubai, where he was arrested before being taken to the United Kingdom. Pius Ewherido was not in the picture. He was in Ewhu, our hometown, on temporary break from politics and minding his business. He became a senator in 2011 on the platform of another political party, having resigned from the PDP earlier. At the time he got to Abuja as a senator, Ibori was already being held in London. The court proceedings and his eventual conviction are in the public domain. Which role did Pius Ewherido play? My brother had nothing to do with Ibori’s problems. Why is an educated man relying on sentiments when facts are available?
My brother worked harmoniously with Ibori when he was governor and my brother was the deputy speaker and acting speaker when the speaker died. They did have an issue which led to the suspension and eventual removal of my brother as deputy speaker for a period. They later reconciled and after the 2003 elections, my brother was returned as the deputy speaker.
Thereafter, the major disagreement they had resulted from the PDP primaries in Ogwashi Uku in 2006. Prior to the primaries, information filtered in that Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan was Ibori’s preferred candidate. My brother went to Oghara to see Ibori. Ibori assured him that he had no preferred candidate. But the rumour refused to go away and my brother asked three more times and Ibori assured him that he had no preferred candidate. Then in the morning of the day of the primaries, Ibori gathered the frontline contestants (Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, HE Ovie Omo-Agege, HE Ifeanyi Okowa and my brother at the government house, Asaba, and told them in the presence of Chief Ighoyota Amori that Uduaghan was the new leader of PDP in Delta State and that the other contestants should go to the venue of the primaries and tell their supporters that they were stepping down for Uduaghan. It did not go down well with my brother. His grouse was that Ibori should have been honest with him ab initio and he would have picked the senatorial form. His problem was not Ibori supporting Uduaghan, but being deceived.
At a later meeting between them brokered by my brother’s father-in-law, Alaowei Broderick Bozimo, my brother did not hide his feelings. To paraphrase, he told Chief Ibori that “if I don’t tell you now, I might not have the opportunity to tell you again. You are a very wicked man. You know you had a candidate, but deceived me and allowed me to waste my money and time.” Ibori was shocked because my brother had never spoken to him like that before. “Pius, na me you dey talk to like that?” Ibori asked. “Yes, because if I no tell you now, I might not have the opportunity again,” my brother retorted.
Even after this incident, they made up. He even invited Chief Ibori to attend my mother’s 75th birthday in Ewhu in 2008. In spite of their political differences, my brother never held anything against Chief Ibori. I spoke with my brother when Ibori was held in London and remember vividly what he told me. He was not the type to rejoice over anybody’s setbacks or downfall. Political differences are normal in politics. My brother never forgot the cordial relationship he had with Ibori while in government. He was also not one to bear grudges forever. Subsequently, my brother contested the Delta Central Senatorial election in 2011 under another political party and won. He was a happy and contented man until death came calling. Until death, he had nothing against Ibori. It is up to Eluemunor to tell the world exactly what Ibori held against my brother and forgave him for, not the nebulous petition Eluemunor is talking about.
When my brother died on June 30, 2013, Uduaghan was with us in the room at the National Hospital, Abuja. My late brother was treated like government property in the hospital, so Uduaghan was informed of his death before they invited my elder brother, now Catholic Bishop of Warri Diocese, His Lordship, Anthony Ovayero Ewherido, to another room, where they (the medical team, Uduaghan, Okowa and Senator James Manager. I cannot recall whether Dr. Chris Oghenechovwen was with them at the meeting or stayed with the family members in the other room during the meeting) broke the news to him. The medical team told us that he died of stroke. My brother had high blood pressure, so my family accepted the loss and moved on.
During his funeral Mass, where Uduaghan was also present, my brother, Bishop Ewherido, told the whole congregation that Pius Ewherido died of stroke. Yet Eluemunor was writing that: “When Senator Akpor Pius Ewherido died in 2013, Ibori from a London prison, asked Mr. Solo Udele, his former ADC and I to send a condolence letter to the Ewherido family. Once we got to the house, wailing broke out everywhere. ‘From Ibori again?’” What is the meaning of “From Ibori again?” Which of the Ewheridos shouted to his hearing that: “From Ibori again?” Eluemunor should have mentioned who said so.
Which house did Eluemunor go to? If it was my mother’s house in Delta State, that would be daylight witchcraft going to give an 80-year-old mother a condolence letter on the death of her son, when the son had a family and grown up siblings. Eluemunor could not have come to my brother’s house in Abuja. His family and siblings were all there. I cannot recall seeing any condolence letter on behalf of Ibori. I was the one who put the condolence letters and messages together for publication in the funeral programme. Eluemunor, did you sign the condolence register? I have been checking. So far, I have not seen his name (at the time of writing). I concede that we were very devastated at that time, but as we say in Urhobo, “Orovie je mrore” (he who is crying still sees). We might not know Eluemunor, but two of my family members know Solo Udele, you alleged was part of the two-man delegation. They affirm that they would have known if Udele came to the house in Abuja. No delegation came on behalf of Ibori, not that it would have made any difference.
Also, there was no wailing by family members in my brother’s house as claimed by Eluemunor. We had cried our hearts out in the hospital. By the time we put his corpse in the morgue and got to the house, the reality was devastating and the pain was paralysing; there was no strength to wail; occasional sobs and free-flowing tears, yes; but wailing? No. At least, not the Ewheridos. In subsequent days, people came to the house to sing Christian songs and pray. Also, Sen. Okowa and Senator Nurudeen Abatemi-Usman joined us in planning the funeral because we wanted the funeral to be quick in line with the rules of the church. That was it.
At this stage, I must confess to the world that I am worried. Eluemunor, you lie too much. What is the purpose of this barrage of lies? What does Eluemunor want? What wrong has the Ewherido family done to him? We don’t even know him personally. I only know him as Ibori’s media man and Saturday Vanguard columnist. Again, I want the world to know that I am worried.
Eluemunor also claimed that Ibori from London spoke with a member of the Ewherido family. Which of the family members? If he did, it could only have been with my sister-in-law who was upstairs most of the time, certainly not any of my brothers or me. She was understandably an emotional wreck then, so even if she spoke with Chief Ibori, she never mentioned it to any of us. But why is Eluemunor so desperate to show to the world that Ibori was there for my brother and my family when my brother was ill? Chief Ibori did not owe my brother a duty of care and my family was not expecting anything from him. He was stuck in London and he had his own problems, so he was not even in the contemplation of my family. Anyway, when he got back to Nigeria, one of the first things he did was to pay a condolence visit to the family of his dear friend, the late Governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha (DSP). For someone who showed so much concern when my brother was critically ill, he never visited nor contacted my family, though we were not expecting any such visit or contact. I know where Pius Ewherido stood with all the political actors in Delta State then. I do not need any tutorials from Eluemunor to know.
For Eluemunor’s information, as far as my brother’s illness, death and burial were concerned, we interfaced personally and mainly with only two people: Dr. Uduaghan, who was then Delta State governor, and Sen. Okowa, the senator representing Delta North in the senate, who was mandated by the Senate to interface with the family. Of course, Senator Manager, Dr. Oghenechovwen, Senator Nurudeen Abatemi-Usman, and a few others came in intermittently.
Again, Eluemunor said “The late Senator was one of the two persons who wrote a petition against Ibori, and handed it over to Chief E. K. Clark, who took it to Obasanjo and who called Ribadu to collect it and add it to the arsenal, trained against Ibori.” So Ribadu already had an “arsenal?” Who provided those other ammunitions? Who gave information to Sahara Reporters to publish? Was it my brother too? Why is Eluemunor not focusing on Papa E. K. Clark, who he alleged, handed the so-called petition to Obasanjo? Papa Clark, even though 96 years old, is still firing from all cylinders and he is untouchable, so Eluemunor picked on a soft target, a man who died almost 10 years ago and cannot defend himself. What about the other person whose name Eluemunor never mentioned? Is he also an untouchable or “one of those who wanted Ibori’s downfall and consequently God also punished him with death,” as some people infer?
Eluemunor also wrote: “When the National Hospital said only an Air Ambulance would suitably move him, Ibori helped to arrange for one to air-lift the man to Germany. I don’t know whether the then Gov. Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan approved for Delta State Government to pay for the aircraft or Ibori personally did, but as the Air Ambulance was landing at Abuja, Ewherido died.” Thank you, Eluemunor, for providing the public this vital but incorrect information. No ambulance arrived Abuja from GERMANY that day. I am just hearing about Ibori’s involvement in arranging an air ambulance for the first time. Please ask Dr. Uduaghan what he told the Ewherido family and what transpired so that you can have accurate information.
Eluemunor said, “Ibori has already forgiven all those who railroaded him into jail.” It is very annoying putting my brother’s name after this sentence. My brother did not offend Ibori or anybody, for that matter, and needs no forgiveness from anybody. Your article was meant to reposition Ibori and insinuate that he is back in the corridors of power. Your message is apparently for PDP people in Delta State over events that happened in 2022-2023, thus derailing Ibori’s succession plan. Eluemunor’s mission in dragging my brother, who died 10 years ago, into the matter for the living is sinister. Is that your gift to the Ewherido family on the 10th anniversary of my brother’s death? Unless you are sending us a coded message, your insinuation that Ibori is back to reckoning could have been passed on without denigrating my brother. Anyway, you painted everybody in your article in bad light, except Ibori, so I am not surprised. But that is very poor image management strategy.
Obviously, you are still angry with Pius Ewherido for reasons best known to you. You can request for the family’s permission to break into his grave and exhume his remains so that you can hang them for his perceived wrongs since you are clearly on the proverbial mission to give a dog a bad name to hang it. Until then, let my brother rest in peace and leave the Ewheridos out of your shenanigans. We are quiet and private people. Leave us alone, Eluemunor.
Apparently, you are playing God. May you live forever, and when you are bored of living on earth, you can ascend to heaven, displace Jesus Christ from the right hand of God the Father and take over his position.
Mr. Francis Ewherido is a brother to the late Sen. Akpor Pius Ewherido.
